About Me
About Tyler Mercer
Hi! I’m Tyler, a software engineer, web developer, and design enthusiast.
This website is where I share my thoughts about various subjects, most notably software design and development and my faith.
Software Design & Engineering Ethos
I believe in the power of well-designed software to improve lives at an individual and community level.
My approach to software design at the product level most closely aligns with “libertarian paternalism,” as described by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein in Nudge1:
Our goal, in short, is to help people make the choices that they would have made if they had paid full attention and possessed complete information, unlimited cognitive ability, and complete self-control.
In other words, I aspire to build software that works with the user to improve the wellbeing of the user and those with whom the user interacts.
To that end, I completed a minor in psychology as part of my university studies, and have continued since then to study psychology informally.
I also love learning about different technologies, architectures, and tools that can help me achieve this. I am firmly against the “use one tool for everything” approach that can often be seen in today’s web development industry.
While I have dabbled in native development in the past, nowadays I am firmly web-first. That might seem contradictory with my previous statement about picking the best tool, but to me, that point is what justifies this one. The web is the best tool to achieve the goals of my projects—to reach people on every platform, without being restricted by oppressive app-store policies and fees, and to contribute to an open, accessible, performant, and truly worldwide web. The web is the single greatest tool for communication and creativity ever invented by mankind2, and is inherently widely accessible—all you need is a web browser. It’s also distributed by design and governed by open standards rather than by a large corporate organization. You won’t find any other widely-used development platform with those characteristics.3
My Faith
I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Some of my core beliefs:
- All people are children of God. God loves all His children.
- Because God loves us, He sent Jesus Christ to take upon Himself our sufferings, sin, and mortality in an event called the Atonement.
- As a result of the Atonement, we can be made “at one” with God and those we love. The Atonement of Christ enables us to receive grace, which makes it possible for us to do and become better.
- Jesus Christ also provides spiritual light, which the scriptures call the Light of Christ, which is that influence deep inside each person that calls him or her towards goodness, other-centeredness, intelligence, and sound principles. This light can be seen througout the world, in every culture, and across history.
I hope that my writings about my faith can capture the sense of wonder that I feel about those ideas and how I see them in the world. I also hope that what I write can be accessible to anyone, regardless of what they believe. God’s light can be found in all of us.
Under the Hood
See the site’s colophon for more about how it is built and deployed.
Contact Me
If you’d like to get in touch, you can contact me here.
Footnotes
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Nudge: The Final Edition: Improving Decisions About Money, Health, and Happiness, 2021 ↩
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I plan to write more about this someday ↩
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Chris Coyier shares some great thoughts about these concepts in this article. ↩